The present application is directed to a device for discharging objects such as containers, drums, packages with axially symmetrical base surfaces that are conveyed on a transport unit.
Such discharge devices are used, for instance, to remove faulty beverage bottles or other empty or already filled food containers or packaging. The transport unit can be a conveyor belt, chain link conveyor, or similar device. During the discharge process, the objects are usually pushed from a first transport unit onto a second transport unit running in parallel. Typical discharge devices can be operated even with bottle throughputs of up to 90000 bottles per hour. However, at such high speeds even minor irregularities can lead to tilting of objects and hence considerably restrict the productivity of the device.
In conventional discharge devices, the objects to be discharged are pushed onto a neighboring, parallelly running transporter by a transverse impetus, which is kept as small as possible. The transverse impetuses are kept as small as possible to minimize the risk of objects tipping over.
To keep the transverse impetus as small as possible, the discharge element can be controlled individually, such that the transverse impetus can be adjusted according to the nature of the object to be discharged. To do so, for instance, object parameters such as weight or the center of gravity of the objects to be discharge can be determined. The discharge element can then be selectively controlled on the basis of these parameters.
For objects with a rotationally symmetrical base surface, such as typically used cylindrical glass or returnable PET beverage bottles, tilting of the objects during discharge can be largely avoided in this way.
However, for typically used cylindrical, disposable PET beverage bottles, it turned out that, despite optimization of the control of the discharging device according to the above mentioned object parameters of the objects to be discharged, tilting of the objects to be discharged occurs relatively frequently. In particular, this is the case if the objects are to be discharged form one transport unit onto another transport unit and is further particularly the case, if the objects have to overcome a height difference during the discharge process.